


Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

by HighlyOpinionatedNerd



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Happy 4/13!, can't believe it's been 10 years, hope you guys enjoy it, in celebration: Dirk and Damara friendship fic!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 19:12:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18452855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HighlyOpinionatedNerd/pseuds/HighlyOpinionatedNerd
Summary: The story of an unlikely friendship between two lonely Derse dreamers.





	Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall

There was a mirror in Dirk’s bedroom on Derse, on the wall opposite his bed. It was a large, old, very ornately decorated mirror. It _looked_ like a normal mirror, but Dirk had always been suspicious that it wasn’t.

For one thing, it hadn’t always been there. One day he’d arrived back in his room after some time out in the city to find it hanging there, just like that. And for another thing, he couldn’t get it down. He couldn’t even figure out how it was mounted; it just seemed to be part of the wall.

For a long time, he’d wondered about it. But after a few weeks of it doing nothing and looking for all the world like just some normal mirror, his curiosity had faded.

The mirror remained there, unchanged, for over a year. And then, very suddenly, one day it changed, and all Dirk’s suspicions were proved to have been well founded.

The first thing he noticed was the sound of voices, faint but clear. He glanced toward the window, frowning- it would have been highly unusual to find any carapacians way up here anywhere near his tower room- but he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary outside. Only then did he realize where the sound was actually coming from.

He found that the surface of the mirror was now displaying an image not of his own bedroom, but of someone else’s. Or at least, he was mostly sure that was what it was...it was kind of hard to tell, since the other room was so dimly lit, but he could see various pieces of furniture and items scattered about.

As he stood up and cautiously approached, he heard the voice again, a little closer this time, as if the speaker were just out of view.

“Hello?” he said.

A pause from the mirror voice. Then, loudly, “...Huh?”

“Hello? Is someone there?”

There was movement at the edge of the mirror’s -for want of a better word- screen, and a dark silhouette appeared, at the far side of their room. Whoever it was muttered something too quiet for him to hear, and then carefully took a few steps forward.

When the stranger finally drew close enough for Dirk to see clearly, the sight made him gasp and instinctively shrink back a little- in the light it was immediately obvious that this person was not human.

In the mirror was an alien girl- at least, he assumed she was a girl- with strange, pale gray skin, big yellow eyes, and sharp-looking orange horns. She jumped at the sight of him too, chattering in a language he didn’t understand.

For a moment, the two of them just stared at each other.

Then the girl took a slow step forward again, reached out a hand and tapped the mirror gently with one of her long nails. Seeming to encounter a solid surface, she frowned.

“Ittai nani ga okotte iru no ka…?”

“I knew there had to be something up with this mirror,” Dirk muttered to himself.

“Meulin,” the girl called over her shoulder to someone out of Dirk’s field of vision. “Meulin, kagami no naka ni eirian ga iru! Kikoeru? Mou okimashita ka?”

“Is that….are you speaking Japanese?”

“Hm? Nanda, sore wa? Jyah-puh-neesu?”

“You are, aren’t you. Japanese. Oh, wait, shit, I don’t know the Japanese word for Japanese…”

Quite suddenly, the girl in the mirror keeled over, her eyes rolling back in her head, startling Dirk. A moment later, the image in the mirror clouded over and faded from view, leaving him staring at his own reflection once more.

‘...irk. Dirk. Dirk, damnit, snap out of it!’

Back on Earth, Dirk blinked. He realized that he’d been standing frozen in place for some time in front of the open fridge, staring blankly into space with all his focus on his Derse self’s predicament.

“Sorry, sorry. I’m ok.”

‘Dude, what the fuck was that?’ the auto-responder’s text scrolled across his vision.

“There was a girl, there was an alien girl, in the mirror…”

‘Huh?! You’re not making any sense!’

“The mirror, the mirror in my bedroom on Derse!”

‘I thought you said it was just a normal mirror.’

“Well, it was. But today was different. It showed me a Japanese alien girl, in her bedroom…”

‘Japanese?’

“It must have been another session of the game. That’s it, that’s the only explanation, it was a vision from a different universe, or something, I’m sure of it.”

‘Can we go back to the part where this vision of yours was speaking Japanese, please?’

“I’m telling you man, I know what I heard. It was definitely Japanese.”

‘Well, that’s. Unexpected.’

“Tell me about it.”

‘Definitely not how I expected first contact to go down. Bad enough that it happened while you were in your pj’s, but...Japanese? So anticlimactic. You just can’t make this shit up, can you?’

“I think she woke up,” Dirk said, thinking back to the conversation’s abrupt end. “I think someone must have woken her up, which would mean that her dream self would fall back asleep.”

‘What happened then?’

“Nothing. The mirror went back to normal.”

‘Weird.’

“Yeah, I know.”

‘So, what now? Do you think you’ll ever see her again, or was this like a one time thing?’

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll see her again when she goes to sleep and wakes back up on Derse?”

There was a moment of silence in the kitchen.

“Where did I leave that spare processing unit?”

‘In the closet. Do you need me to tell the others not to bother you for a while?’

“Yeah, thanks. We’ve got work to do.”

 

Dirk spent the next several hours building an automated translator, and then another very frustrating half an hour trying to figure out a way to captchalogue it in such a way that his Derse self would be able to access it. In the end, with some help from the auto-responder, he finally managed it.

And then, they waited.

“I think something’s happening,” Dirk said after another few hours, when the mirror’s surface began to ripple and change.

‘What? What’s happening? What do you see? Is she there? Is it-’

“Shut up and let me concentrate!”

Dirk shuffled a few steps closer to the mirror and watched as the picture cleared and the alien girl from last time sat up from where she’d fallen, stretching her arms over her head.

“Hey,” he said, making her jump and utter a surprised curse. “Hey, it’s me again.”

“Kuso, kore o wasureta. Saru, saru!”

“I made this,” Dirk said, holding up his translator. “So now we’ll be able to understand each other. Go on, say something.”

“Nani ni tsuite hanashite imasu ka? Anata wa daijoubuda to omoimasu.”

To Dirk’s pleasant surprise, the translator seemed to be working- which meant that he had been right, and she was speaking perfect Japanese. Heart beating quick with excitement and anticipation, he eagerly leaned over to read the translation on the screen.

“What are you talking about?” it read. “I understand you fine.”

“...Oh. You do? You understand me?”

“Ee, soudesu. Naze anata wa watashi o rikai shite inai nodesu ka?” she asked. Dirk’s translator device read, “Yes, I do. Why don’t you understand me?”

“I don’t speak Japanese.”

“Neither do I. Have you never heard an East Beforan accent before?”

“I have no idea what that means. On my planet, Japanese and English are two completely different languages, and they don’t really interact much.”

“English?”

“Yeah, that’s the language I’m speaking right now. Or, at least, that’s what it’s called here.”

“...Huh.”

The girl seemed to feel a little more comfortable with talking to Dirk now. Her body language was more relaxed, and her eyes were no longer narrowed warily.

“You made that, that thing, so you could understand me better? In just one day?”

“Yes.”

“Hm. One of my friends keeps saying he’s going to make one of those for himself and the others, but he never has. That was...considerate of you, I guess.”

“Well, it’s not every day you have an encounter like this. What’s your name?”

“Damara Megido.”

“Da...Da- _mur_ -a Megi-doh.”

“Eh, close enough. What’s yours?”

“I’m Dirk. Dirk Strider.”

“Dah-ku Sto-ra-ee-duh.”

“Close enough.”

They smiled hesitantly at each other.

“What kind of alien are you, Dirk Strider?”

“I’m a human. What about you?”

“Troll.”

Dirk frowned. “Wait. Troll?”

“Yes. What, you heard of us?”

Suddenly, a lot of the things he had read about the invading species that had killed off all but every human on Earth were making a lot more sense.

“Your people are the ones who destroyed mine!”

“What? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Don’t try to deny it. I know all about you, how your empress flies her armies throughout space and invades whatever inhabited planet she comes across. You’re the ones who-”

“Stop, stop, you’re not making any sense. Empress? What empress?”

“Your leader, the empress. The empress, the batterwitch, the Life Thief, call her what you want, that crazy bitch who will be the one to end all humanity.”

Damara shook her head, raising her hands palm-out in a universal gesture of ‘calm down’. “I swear, I have no idea what you’re talking about. We don’t have an empress. We don’t even have an heiress any more, she ditched everything to go live on the moon. And then, to come here with us. We’re a peaceful society, mostly. I’ve never even heard of...what do you call yourselves again?”

“Humans.” Dirk paused, biting his lip. “Are you sure?”

“Pretty goddamn sure, yeah.”

“Oh. Oh, uh, ok...I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m just confused...”

“It’s ok. I think...I don’t know for sure, but I think there is more than just one troll session. I mean, more than just the parallel versions of ours, if that makes sense. Maybe one of those is the universe your planet exists in?”

“Maybe.”

Damara cocked her head to the side, watching him. “If that’s true, and you’re from a world where trolls are violent against other species, then...I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize, it’s not your fault.”

“Maybe not. But I know what it can be like, when highbloods get violent. It’s not fun. So, sorry.”

“Thank you.”

The two of them lapsed into an awkward silence. Dirk fiddled with a loose thread in his purple pj’s.

“Why’d you say will?”

“Hm?” Dirk frowned, wondering if there was a problem with the translator.

“You said the troll empress you know destroyed the humans. And then after, you said she _will_ destroy the humans. Why the change? You a Time player?”

“What? No, no I don’t think so. But my session actually hasn’t even started yet, so I don’t know. Maybe I am.”

This time it was Damara’s turn to frown in confusion. “You’re awake on Derse, and you know all this shit about the game and other sessions and everything, but you’re not actually playing yet? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It’s…it’s a complicated situation. My friend and I are waiting for our other two players to, well...to be ready. It’s not time yet, but I don’t think it’ll be long now.”

“Weird.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. They’re in a different time, too, and sometimes I get kind of caught up between the two. Sometimes it’s like, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be saving humanity or avenging it. Sorry, I know I’m still not making sense...”

“No, I get it. From their perspective, activating a session of the game will change the future, and for you, the past. But, in reality, it doesn’t change anything. Because if you live in a timeline where the game is activated, then events are simply proceeding as they always would.”

“Uhhhh...I’m sorry, you’ve lost me.”

Damara laughed- the first time Dirk had seen her do so. “That’s ok. I _am_ a Time player, so I have an innate understanding of all that stuff. Or at least, that’s what my sprite made it seem like. Just trust me on this.”

“Alright then, I’ll take your word for it.”

“Smart boy. Still though, it is a very interesting situation you find yourself in, Human Dirk Strider. So you live in a time far enough advanced in your civilization’s progression to have communication with the past?”

“More or less, yeah. There’s not really much of a civilization left anymore, though.”

“Fascinating.” Damara’s eyes sparkled. “Tell me more.”

 

From that day on, Dirk found a fast friend in Damara. Despite their rocky, awkward start, it wasn’t long before the two of them were chatting like they’d known each other for years every time Damara awoke on Derse. It was quite the pleasant change from the severe isolation that Dirk was used to.

He told her everything. He told her about his dual, ever-waking selves, one on Earth and the other on Derse. He told her about the Earth as he and Roxy knew it, as well as the Earth it once had been. He told her about the robotic companions he’d built for himself- and about the auto-responder, which she found hilarious. He told her about Roxy and Jane and Jake, and the mixed-up, messed up, hodgepodge of emotions that complicated their friendship, to which she replied,“sounds like teenage bullshit is the same in every universe.”

She told him things, too. And he listened to every word intently, intrigued by the descriptions of an alien culture he could only imagine.

She told him about her planet, Beforus, and her life there. She told him about the lusus that raised her. She told him about the other players in her session- all eleven of them- and the story of how they had all entered the game together.

“I still don’t get it,” Dirk said after nearly an hour’s explanation. “None of these people seem to really, like, care about you? Well, maybe this Rufioh guy does, and he’s trying to make up for what he did to you by including you in the party, but...I don’t see how inviting you to play a game with him and the guy he cheated on you with could ever have occurred to him as a good idea.”

“Me neither, honestly.”

“Then why did you agree to it? Do you still love him?”

“I don’t know. For a while I wondered if maybe I was starting to have caliginous feelings for him, but...I don’t know. I don’t think that’s it.”

“I have no idea what ‘caliginous’ means.”

“You know. Spades.”

“That doesn’t help at all.”

“Really? Humans don’t have a spades quadrant? You guys are kinda fucked up.”

“Thanks.” Dirk rolled his eyes. “I don’t think you should try to get back with him, Damara. I think you’d probably be better off without all of them, really.”

“If I wasn’t with them, I’d be dead,” she pointed out. “Alternia’s gone.”

“Oh. Right.”

“I can look out for myself, Dirk, don’t worry.”

“Alright, if you say so. So what’s caliginous mean?”

“You sure you wanna go down that earbeast hole?”

“I’m sure. Tell me.”

 

One day, movement on the surface of the mirror caught Drik’s eye, but when he looked into it it was not Damara that he saw. It was a couple of dark Derse carapacians edging their way carefully into his field of vision, their weapons drawn.

“Hey!” Dirk yelled, jumping to his feet. “Hey, stop!”

The carapacians’ heads whipped around, the unexpected sound catching them by surprise.

“Get away from her,” Dirk said loudly. “Damara! Damara, wake up!”

One of the carapacians muttered something under his breath and made a gesture to his comrade, who stepped closer to the mirror and took off his coat, which he draped over Damara’s mirror.

“No, stop!” Dirk grabbed at the edges of his own mirror, but was powerless to do anything to remove the improvised curtain. “Damara! Wake up, Damara, wake up! You’re in danger, wake up!”

A loud shout, quickly followed by several more unidentifiable sounds came from beyond the mirror, and Dirk’s heart sank. But when the coat was pulled off and his vision restored, he was relieved to see that Damara was the one staring back at him.

“Arigato. Tasukete.”

Dirk nodded. Even without his translator to hand, he knew that she was thanking him.

“Are you ok?”

“Daijoubu desu.” Damara stepped back a little from the mirror, enough for Dirk to see the bloody, lifeless bodies of her would-be attackers on the floor behind her. That, and the sharp needle-like weapons in either of Damara’s hands, slowly dripping blood onto the carpet.

The troll girl said something else, and pointed out the window.

“You want to check on the others,” Dirk guessed, and she nodded. “Alright. Be careful.”

Damara nodded again, giving him the ghost of a smile in reassurance. Then she clambered up onto the window ledge and leapt out, soaring away and out of sight.

 

As time went on, Dirk began to see Damara less and less. Fortunately, no other would-be assassins snuck into her bedroom, though he kept an eye out as often as he could, just in case.

No, the problems in her session came from within, rather from without. From what she told him- and he could tell that she wasn’t always telling him everything- there was a lot of fighting amongst the party members.

Damara’s sleep schedule grew steadily more and more inconsistent. When she did sleep it usually wasn’t for long, and she always awoke suddenly. Dirk watched her grow more and more withdrawn- gone were her easy laugh and her teasing jokes, replaced by a deep melancholy that broke Dirk’s heart to see.

“I wish I could do something to help you,” he said.

“Thanks, Dirk, but these are my problems to deal with, not yours.”

“I know, but still. You shouldn’t have to deal with them by yourself.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be ok. I can take these highbloods.”

“It’ll all be worth it once you finish the game, right? You’ll have a whole new world to yourself, and you won’t ever have to see any of them again if you don’t want to.”

Damara stared at him for a moment, looking almost like she was going to cry. But then she forced a smile and nodded. “Yeah, exactly. Once we win the game.”

“Do you think we’ll still be able to talk, once that happens?”

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Me too. I never imagined that I would ever be friends with a troll.”

She smiled again, but this time it was more genuine. Probably the truest smile he’d seen from her in a long time. “Me neither. But here we are.”

“Here we are.”

Damara glanced away towards something he couldn’t see, and sighed. “I should get in bed. It’s almost time for me to get up, I think.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

“Right, Time player stuff.”

“Precisely.”

“Well, be safe out there, Damara.”

“I will, I will. See you next time, Dirk.”

 

That was the last time Dirk and Damara ever spoke through the mirror that connected their two rooms.

One night, when all was quiet and dark outside Dirk’s window, the mirror suddenly flared to life. Unlike the usual dim scene he usually saw through it, this time everything was lit with the light from a raging fire, almost blindingly bright. As he watched, part of the ceiling of Damara’s room collapsed, falling in on itself with a loud crash.

Damara’s dream self was nowhere to be seen.

Dirk watched helplessly as the rest of the tower room slowly tumbled down, leaving him with a view of a Derse in flames.

After a little while, the mirror went dark just as suddenly as it had lit up. And after that, it never showed him an image of Damara’s room again.

 

Years passed.

Dirk and Roxy continued with their plans to enter the game with Jane and Jake when the time was right. Everything went pretty much according to plan for most of the time, which was more than good enough for him.

And eventually, the right time finally came, and their session began in earnest. For a time, Dirk found himself quite preoccupied with everything that entailed.

But after a while, when things began to settle down a bit and they weren’t constantly running for their lives from this threat or that, he decided it was time to leave on a personal quest that had nothing to do with the game.

He ventured out into the furthest ring, where he’d been told the dream bubbles were haunted by the ghosts of previous sessions. He explored memory after memory, seeking direction from everyone he came across.

And, after what seemed to him like an eternity of searching, the scenery around him began to change into something familiar- a dimly lit Derse bedroom decorated in shades of burgundy.

Sitting on the windowsill, looking out to the horizon was a troll girl in a long purple nightgown. 

She looked around when she heard the sound of his footsteps approaching...

And she smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!!!


End file.
